OMGarden is an animated music video made for the energetic Big Wild. The narrative follows Mopsy (based on his real life counterpart) as his curiosity transports him from the routine of life, to a magical place where friends gather and experience a world brimming with the vibrancy and joy of music. 

Mopsy’s experience will only last a few minutes, but the emotions and excitement that this adventure gives will stay with him forever.

This article will detail our process for creating an animated music video. We’ll lay out what drove the creative decisions, dive into process, and explore how it was made. Come, follow us through the hedge and down this rabbit hole.

We knew early on that the characters needed to be grounded in reality in order to push the magical realism of the whole piece. They still needed to hop on all fours, and generally act like real animals. To go fully anthropomorphic, dancing on two legs and singing with the music was explored, but ultimately we chose to keep them connected to real animals while still expressive, emotive.

Once this creative direction was established for the characters it was easier to extend that framework into the environment. This new magical dance grove still needed to be based in reality, but elevated ever so slightly from Mopsy’s normal life. The colors are a little richer, the plants move to the beat of the music, ethereal light changes to the mood on the dance floor, all to create a rich and engaging dance experience.

Storyboarding for music videos is a bit different from a narrative piece. It’s important that the visuals align with the music, as the visuals are complementary to the song. With that in mind, we started off with a text version and used a beat counter, to time things out and build out the animatic at the same time.

Once the text version flowed well enough and was approved, we did a rough, thumbnail pass and then a fully rendered storyboard pass. More detail was put into the storyboards, in order to make sure the color harmonies were working well within the context of the story and song.

We approached the character animation in a traditional manner. Actions and layouts were roughed in completely. Timing was important, because many of the actions are in time with the beat of the song. Once we had the tiedowns locked in, cleanup began.

For the chorus sections, we wanted the animation to be simple, yet engaging, where you could sit and watch the animation for hours on end, like a fireplace fire. Since the animation was to be looping for this section, multiple dance loops were made for the rabbits, especially Mopsy, as he is centralized. The other woodland creatures were also made with looping dances and placed around to populate the area. Having the environment in 3D made it much easier to rotate around and give us a view of the entire space. As objects would pass by in the foreground obstructing the view of the rabbits, we could swap out the loops and make it less repetitive.

With the video completed, Jackson would be playing it during his live performances of OMGarden. A few of us had the privilege of seeing the performance live, and as artists, seeing the real time reactions of the audience to the video and performance, made it all worthwhile. It reminded us of why we choose to pour our passions into creative works such as this, and to continue to do so. 

Producer: Jared Hobbs
Director: Barret Thomson
Project Manager/Animation Lead: Jack Ellis
Co-Project Manager/Animator: Adam DiTerlizzi
Lead Compositor/3D Lead: Esli Becerra
Lead Illustrator: Finn Sylwester
Animator: Matthew Seely
Concept Designer: Gaby West
3D Animator: Sean Phoenix
3D Artist: Kyle Nelson
3D Assistance: Elliott Bynum
Marketing Director: Max Richards
Publicity: Courtney Courier

Software
Adobe Animate
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe After Effects
Maxon Cinema 4D